Lords of Uncreation


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
 Copyright © 2023 by Adrian Czajkowski
 Cover design by Steve Stone
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 First Edition: May 2023
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 Library of Congress Control Number: 2022950530
 ISBNs: 9780316705929 (hardcover), 9780316705950 (ebook)
 E3-20230317-JV-NF-ORI
 
 
 
 CONTENTS
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Copyright
 Dedication
 The Story So Far
 Part One: Estoc
 
 Chapter 1
 Chapter 2
 Chapter 3
 Chapter 4
 Chapter 5
 Chapter 6
 Chapter 7
 Chapter 8
 
 
 Part Two: Estoc
 
 Chapter 9
 Chapter 10
 Chapter 11
 Chapter 12
 Chapter 13
 Chapter 14
 Chapter 15
 Chapter 16
 Chapter 17
 
 Part Three: Crux
 
 Chapter 18
 Chapter 19
 Chapter 20
 Chapter 21
 Chapter 22
 
 Part Four: Beyond
 
 Chapter 23
 Chapter 24
 Chapter 25
 Chapter 26
 Chapter 27
 Chapter 28
 Chapter 29
 Chapter 30
 Chapter 31
 Chapter 32
 Chapter 33
 Chapter 34
 
 
 The Universe of Shards: Reference
 
 Glossary
 Characters
 Worlds
 Species
 Ships
 Timeline
 
 
 Acknowledgements
 Discover More
 Also by Adrian Tchaikovsky
 
 
 
 
 Begin Reading
 Table of Contents
 
 
 
 
 BY ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY
 SHADOWS OF THE APT
 Empire in Black and Gold
 Dragonfly Falling
 Blood of the Mantis
 Salute the Dark
 The Scarab Path
 The Sea Watch
 Heirs of the Blade
 The Air War
 War Master’s Gate
 Seal of the WormECHOES OF THE FALL
 
 The Tiger and the Wolf
 The Bear and the Serpent
 The Hyena and the HawkTHE FINAL ARCHITECTURE
 
 Shards of Earth
 Eyes of the Void
 Lords of Uncreation
 Guns of the Dawn
 Children of Time
 Children of Ruin
 Children of Memory
 The Doors of Eden
 
 
 
 To John Catling
 
 
 
 THE STORY SO FAR
 Key concepts
 Unspace: the underlying nothing beneath the universe. Gravitic drives allow ships to enter and travel through unspace, crossing light years of real space in moments. Most journeys are taken along Throughway routes between stars.
 The Architects: moon-sized entities that come from unspace to rework inhabited planets into bizarre sculptures. One of their number visited Earth, which began seventy years of fight and flight, a war costing billions of lives. Only contact between the engineered human Intermediaries and the Architects ended the conflict. Now, fifty years later, the Architects have returned.
 Originators: on some planets, the ruins of an elder civilization of Originators can be found, still entirely mysterious. Previously Architects appeared to avoid any trace of this ancient culture. More recently they have taken to painstakingly removing such traces from ships and planets they plan to rework.
 The Hegemony: an alien empire controlled by the inscrutable Essiel, who have sole access to the technology that allows Originator artefacts to be moved. They promise their subjects eternal protection from the Architects. However, the newly returned Architects no longer seem to be as in awe of the artefacts as they once were.
 Humanity’s factions
 Following the explosive expansion of refugee humanity in the “Polyaspora,” humanity now exists across numerous colonies, from the comfortable settled worlds to the vast numbers of spacers who still live precarious lives between planets. Trade and travel within the Colonial Sphere is greatly helped by the Intermediaries, who are among the few able to navigate unspace without using the Throughways. The Colonies are governed by the Council of Human Interests, familiarly known as Hugh, from the world of Berlenhof.
 Humanity stood alongside many others during the first war against the Architects, but its closest allies came from within. These included the Hivers, who are a composite cyborg intelligence, built as tools but now independent. Dr. Parsefer’s Parthenon, an artificially created society of women, also formed the front line in the war.
 Following the secession of both Hivers and Parthenon, hostile Colonial factions have arisen, including the humanity-first Nativists and the Betrayed, who believe in a conspiracy that has denied humans their pre-eminence in the universe. Various groups within Hugh encourage and draw support from these growing factions, including the dictatorial noble houses of the Magda, one of the Colonies’ most influential worlds.
 Key characters
 The Vulture God: a salvage ship. Its crew includes drone specialist Olli, lawyer and duellist Kris, trade factor Kittering and Idris Telemmier. Idris is one of the last of the original Intermediaries, who wanted nothing more than to live out his days in peace until an old friend from the war, the Partheni Solace, came looking to recruit him for her government.
 Havaer Mundy: an agent of Hugh who has variously pursued and associated with the crew of the Vulture God as they became entwined with the return of the Architects.
 Delegate Trine: a Hiver archaeologist, an old friend of